AT&T may be the most irritating company ever. They think our account is past due because we’re not paying the setup fee we were told didn’t exist…and guys kept showing up at the door even though we had said we would self-install & they wouldn’t be allowed to touch our devices/network anyway…they’ve apologized & said they’d fix it three times so far. And now they’ve cut off service.

This happened once before, in New Orleans. I’d tell you the story, but I think I’ll work it into fiction…we’ll see how it goes this time. Meanwhile, their office appears to be closed.

Can’t transcribe this morning’s fiction unless I carry my laptop elsewhere (my app lets me use WiFi but depends on JavaScript files that reside in the intertoobz).

So, not much done yet. Will keep working over here, and will hope to have better news tomorrow.

ADDENDUM

(The above was posted from my phone. This part wasn’t.)

See, here’s the thing. It was annoying that I couldn’t access the internet via my laptop–and, due to a recent “update” to iOS, I couldn’t tether the laptop to my phone either. Unless I jailbroke the phone, in which case the Uber app would complain…

I poked around. I noticed that DNS, the system that resolves hostnames like “cnn.com” to IP addresses like 157.166.226.25, was still working just fine via my “suspended” DSL line–it was part of the way AT&T chose to forward all web traffic to their page that tells me I need to call a number they don’t answer on holidays. Most traffic was blocked, but DNS worked fine. Hmm.

Well, okay. DNS traffic uses port 53. What does that mean? Not a lot, really. It’s just a convention. Like, a web server listens on ports 80 (normal http) and 443 (https). If you connect to a web server from your computer, your computer generates a random-looking port number for each request, so it can tell (when the server answers) which data is part of which image or bit of text or whatever. Sound arbitrary and easily messed with? Yep. You’re right.

So I keep a couple of servers out there in cloudland. I told one of them (via my phone) to listen on port 53, just as if it were a DNS server, which it ain’t. Then I told my laptop to listen on a custom port (I chose 9080 for no particular reason) and forward all traffic from there to port 53 on my server out on the internet. Then I told my web browser to use localhost:9080 as what’s called a socks proxy.

Voilà. I’m online! From my laptop. Though I appear, to websites I visit, to be browsing from within someone else’s data center. No skin off my nose, except that it can be tracked back to me. (So I also use Tor, but that’s a separate post…except that it’s actually in a book I wrote.)

Yes, I can do more with this…but I don’t necessarily want all my household’s video streaming to go out via this tunnel–I actually pay for traffic to and from the server I’m using. Upshot: AT&T is annoying, but handled for now. I told them I’d bill by the hour to deal with ’em, too, just for fun. We’ll see how it goes.

Back on track, sort of. Down most of a writing day, though.

Have fun out there!

Hi folks!

A few of you have apparently been bothered by the image I’ve sent out in my last few emails (for those of you who subscribe to the blog via email). Well, basically? Tough. Those people are all members of my family, and I love them, and I think the picture is kind of fun. Still, I’ll handle some of the objections below.

• Yes, that there is a transgendered teen. No, I don’t care if her existence offends you. We love her around here. As for which bathroom she uses, I have to say (a) I don’t care, and (b) I don’t think she has an option that won’t offend somebody, so the hell with it
• No, those are not foster kids. I don’t post pictures of foster kids online. Yes, those adult-type people you see in the picture used to live with us. What of it?
• Yes, that’s a glass of whiskey sitting next to me. Sometimes I drink the stuff. Specifically, it’s the 15-year-old Laphroaig. If that matters to you. It certainly did to me! Good stuff.
• Yes, there are a couple of cigars in the picture. It was Thanksgiving, and a couple of us indulged. Yes, there’s a small child present. Outdoors, and with a breeze, and no, you can’t point to a study that shows the effect (good, bad, or indifferent) of a kid–or anyone else–smelling a lit cigar once every few months. Or every week, for that matter. Or even, it turns out, every day. That sort of “if a lot of something is harmful, a little bit must also be harmful” thinking is, frankly, just silliness. Sorry if that’s not PC enough for you. Jacob Sullum over at Reason has quite a bit to say on the subject of cigars specifically, but if you like we can get into the notion in general at some point. Science may not work the way you think it does.
• You are of course welcome to your own opinions. I encourage you to hold them, and act on them, whenever feasible. Y’all help make life interesting that way.

Okay. I’ve posted the above, so I won’t reply to further email on the above subjects. Unless I want to, of course.

That said…I’m pretty excited. Just two more days till September 1. I’ve carved out my first-thing-in-the-morning time for the month, and a bit more time Monday-Friday, and I’m looking forward to reading whatever stories result.

So. Have fun out there!

Have you guys heard about this? I’m kind of tired of hearing about it already. I mean, it’s a problem…but at the same time I see it as a self-inflicted sort of thing all around. Amazon’s not paying a lot of attention, we writers let them get away with it, and so forth.

Bright side: I don’t think it’s hurting readers at all. Or at least not yet. Or at least not much.

Here’s the scoop: fake books are being published via Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service. They’re, sometimes, really long. Thousands of pages? Well, why not? These tomes have links near the beginning, intended to entice readers to click on them and thus move to the end of the book. So, this works. Readers click on the links. Readers then discover there’s not a lot of useful content (maybe even none at all), and they move on with their lives. Some will leave a bad review. Others don’t care a whole lot. The world doesn’t end, or at least not right away. The oceans have yet to boil, even.

On the writers’ side, things are very slightly worse. See, with Kindle Unlimited (an ebook subscription service, if you’ve been living under a rock but just emerged to read this here post), Amazon pays writers per page read. They standardize fonts & so forth for this calculation, and lately they pay a bit under half a cent per page. So if you read a book of mine that’s got 440 “Kindle Edition Normalized Pages” in it, I get a bit over two bucks.

Before we go any further, I want to say that I very much appreciate the KU readers who find and read what I’ve written and published. And I love the idea of ebook subscription services in general. I especially love that Amazon doesn’t try to force me to use DRM…as including that would prevent my participation entirely. (Pet peeve there; maybe I’ll post about that some other time.)

That said? This business of counting pages read is, clearly, creepazoidal all by itself. It’s why my Kindle can’t talk to Amazon anymore–I did other stuff to it, but mostly I just leave it in “airplane mode.” Next, the thing is, the money paid out each month by Amazon is determined by Amazon. Writers get a proportional share, depending on how many pages of theirs have been read, how many total pages (across all readers and writers in KU) have been read, and the set amount Amazon has decided to pay each month. So, theoretically, the more scammers scam, the less everybody else gets paid. This gets ever so slightly worse, because Amazon pays bonuses to the writers who have the very highest page-read counts each month. So the scammers have been scamming those too. I almost even care.

I do care, a bit, that the scammers have been simultaneously scamming the free book bestseller lists. Mostly because this keeps other books, perhaps some of them being a bit more deserving of algorithmic love (or at least lust), from moving up the bestseller lists and thus being pushed (by Amazon) to potential new readers. But they do it because, once they have enough Amazon accounts set up, it costs nothing to “buy” the freebies…which, once they’ve run up the freebie-charts, then retain a smidgen of digital sex appeal in the nonfree charts. It’s, you know, how the scam works after all.

But look: there are bigger problems.

Kindle Unlimited, while very cool, is only open to writers who are willing to make their ebooks exclusive to Amazon for 90 days at a time. Right now, it’s financially very unattractive to be left out of Kindle Unlimited. Participation pays directly, and there’s also the side benefit that Amazon appears to consider each “borrow” to be the equivalent of a sale for purposes of calculating a book’s bestseller ranking. Those rankings then determine many aspects of a book’s exposure on Amazon’s website. So KU participation opens up an income stream, and boosts exposure, thus (maybe?) leading to more outright sales. (I mean “licenses”…another rant for another time!) But this does mean writers must choose between Amazon and the rest of the world. There’s nothing inherently evil in this–it’s good business sense on Amazon’s part, and it’s just a choice each writer/publisher must make. But it’s only possible for Amazon to do this because we writers allow it. We could stand on principle, if we have any relevant principles on which to stand. But it’ll cost us if we do. What’s the solution? Well, somebody else can build a competing (as opposed to “merely also existing”) ebook subscription service without the exclusivity requirement. It’ll happen eventually. Sooner is better, as far as I’m concerned.

Also, about the “pages read” thing? I haven’t seen this written anywhere yet…but, given that the scam above works, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest this means Amazon didn’t really build any new system to count pages read at all. You know how your Kindles and Kindle apps will theoretically (this has never worked well for me) auto-sync to the last page you’ve read for each title? Well, to do that, Amazon must have already built a system to keep track of that last page. Right? So, barring evidence to the contrary, I’m thinking they’re using that same technology to pay out KU pages read.

Thing is…I really haven’t been able to get that “sync” thing to work for me. I can’t sync between an iPhone and a Paperwhite. Trying to use the Kindle apps for Windows and Android just leads to more problems.

So what do I think? I think Amazon is probably mis-counting pages all over the place. Since the sync errors I’ve seen have generally taken the form of “you are already at the last page read” (or whatever the message actually says; it’s been a while since I tried) I think this means Amazon is simply not counting a lot of pages that are, in fact, read.

Maybe this evens out, over time. As long as Amazon never admits to it, it probably doesn’t matter a whole lot. But I think it’s interesting. I also think it’s interesting that any readers out there who have a Kindle Unlimited membership, but always read the books offline, are still helping authors (via the bestseller rankings, because borrows count as if they were sales) but the authors are not getting paid.

Now, Amazon’s done goofy stuff. They’ve penalized some writers for putting their Table of Contents in the back of their ebooks, apparently because that can screw up their pages-read metric. Well, placing the ToC in the back has been considered good practice for years, especially for shorter ebooks–that way the “free sample” potential readers can check out has more meaningful content, after all. But Amazon doesn’t seem to have done much to stop, or even meaningfully hinder, the actual scammers. Easier, I guess, to harass the innocent.

So. You’re all caught up, if you weren’t already. Things are messy out there for writers and publishers, but readers can simply read books while we figure it all out.

You know what? That doesn’t sound so bad. So, the hell with it. I’m going to think about something else now. You can too, if you want.

Have fun out there!

Well, maybe.

Thing is, I like fooling around with Twitter. Once upon a time I had about 47K “followers” (mostly other writers), and it was fun to play with them online. But I eventually decided I was spending far too much time on that game. I tried to justify it as a business-related thing (you know, “building an audience”?) but that was just BS. I had lots of fun conversations, and I did that instead of working. Something had to give. So I canceled my account.

Then I created a new account, much later. It looks just like the old account, since nobody grabbed my username in the interim. Only it has <100 “followers” and I haven’t tried to increase that number. I’ve been using Twitter mostly for joking around with people, and getting news, and so forth.

The problem? Well, it’s not just Twitter, actually. Lots of sites are claiming recently that they need to harass me because of “suspicious activity”–they’ll go on and say it might be a virus problem or whatever, but in reality it’s a semi-blacklist of Tor exit relays and VPN endpoints. How do I know? Well, because I use both of those, a lot. The number of them that I can use without issues seems to be decreasing.

See, users of Tor and VPNs seem to share IP addresses (stuff that looks like “192.168.1.10”). So in principle it could be that various malicious actors are using these tools to hide their identities–though there are weaknesses to this approach, and if you care? I wrote a book about it–and, since I’m using the same apparent IP addresses, it therefore makes my activity seem “suspicious.” So it’s all sweetness and light, and I should be grateful for this added protection.

But I don’t think that’s what’s going on at all, because these “suspicious activity detected” so-called warnings have become much, much more common of late. And if I get hassled because of a particular VPN’s IP address, and I jump through whatever hoops are required to either view content or log in to a site? And I then use the same IP address for, say, my next login attempt? An hour later? I get hassled again. I see only two plausible reasons for this: 1) Whoever’s developing this technology doesn’t understand that, if I “verified” my login via some other method, it stands to reason that I might not need to be hassled for using that same IP address in the future, or 2) it’s a deliberate attempt to make using IP-cloaking tools more burdensome.

Somebody or other could do a bit of research and try to quantify this stuff. In fact, I could do it…or put some effort into it. But the thing is, I don’t want to. I just did all sorts of research for that book. I don’t want to do any more right now. Other projects, you know?

Instead, I’ll just refrain from speculating as to why this is going on…barely mentioning that advertisers and governments both have a horrible tendency to gather potentially useful data on individuals (and it gets put to surprising uses), and tools like Tor or a VPN may impede that sort of thing under some circumstances…and probably just kill off my Twitter account. Again. I sent ’em an email, and it’s possible they’ll quit hassling me. But I doubt it.

Was this worth a blog post? I don’t know. Maybe. Readers of that book might find it interesting. It’s the sort of thing that can seem paranoid to those who…heh…haven’t read my book, which not only explains what’s going on in situations like this but has hundreds of links to back up my (otherwise?) ridiculous claims. Though you could get much the same information elsewhere. After all, that’s what I did.

Am I telling you to go read my book? Sort of, I guess. Mostly I’m posting this because my private list of sites I won’t go to anymore without taking additional measures–such as viewing those sites’ content via a search engine’s IP address, after I access that search engine via a VPN or Tor or both–keeps growing. I wish people would stop buying the “this is to protect your website from spammers and evildoers” sales pitch. Maybe this post will reach at least one person, and change one site’s policy, and help keep at least one little corner of the internet a bit more free?

Just hoping, is all. It’s what I do.

Have fun out there!

Not that it’s too hard for them to do so. Yesterday I tried to publish my story True North on Amazon’s site. They say they need, sometimes, 12 hours to publish English-language ebooks.

My experience is that they generally take less time than that. The thing was “In Review” for only a few minutes, and has been sitting in “Live–Updates Publishing” for over 24 hours.

The thing is, I don’t believe them. First, the “live” part of that should refer to ebooks that were previously published and merely being updated. Second, in the past when they were indeed publishing (meaning “pushing stuff out to their servers”) I’ve been able to access my ebooks well in advance of their official “you’re published!” email. Often within an hour or so.

This time? Nothing. On all Amazon sites, the links give a “404 Not Found” error. And in their “Author Central” site, where I can typically link my books (in case there’s another person using the same name, I guess, and from the same account?) I can’t find the new story. Usually this, too, works fairly quickly.

And I can’t schedule the thing to go free until Amazon admits they’ve pushed the thing to their servers, so…it’s just stuck.

I’m not looking forward to trying to fix this. It happened once before, and I had to go through several rounds of “there’s no problem and we’re closing your support ticket immediately–you should wait 12 hours at least next time” with Amazon support staff over a couple of days before suddenly a ticket wasn’t closed right away…then the ebook finally showed up…and then I got an email telling me there was no problem, ’cause see? It’s published now!

I don’t want to go through that process today. Other things to do. I don’t know when True North will be available, or when I’ll be able to schedule its 5-day freebie.

When it happens, I’ll post. Sorry about this.

I’m writing this from my iPhone, because my office has been thoroughly disassembled. It’s now mostly temporary storage for stuff we’re going to try to sell. (Though chances are this won’t actually turn out to be a good use of either time or space!)

As for why that happened? Well, remember how I said my family and I would be moving down south in the fall? Well, some folks sort of peripherally related to my wife’s job are being annoying. So she’s given them two weeks to straighten up.

Of course they won’t straighten up. They don’t care whether she quits. But her boss might, and she might also do something about it. Thing is, that “something” would also have to include an arrangement for telecommuting to begin by the fall, or there’d be little point to it.

So, the upshot? It’s starting to seem very likely that we’ll be getting on a ferry down to Washington (I’d rather just take it 60 miles to Haines and drive from there–it’s more fun, faster, and cheaper–but I prefer not to take the fam on the Alaska Highway in wintry weather, and anyway we inherited a bunch of guns, which are apparently anti-Canadian), and by that I mean purty dern soon.

Er. So, yeah, when I think about missing the Liard Hot Springs this trip? This, however unjust, springs to mind: Blame Canada!

We’re spending the weekend packing, sorting, and giving stuff away. If we’re leaving, we want to be ready. If we’re here till fall? So what? We’ll have less to do when the time comes.

Not sure where we’ll be going yet. Or going first, anyway. We kinda don’t care! But we’ll have fun.

Meanwhile, though…I’m not going to even try to write and publish a story every week while simultaneously dumping clutter, moving “outside” (as folks here in Alaska call the rest of the world), and homeschooling the kid. Then, regardless of this mess, I’ll be in Vegas playing a ton of poker during all of June and maybe early July…and late May, too, if other plans permit. (The longer trip might happen ’cause we’d no longer have a swarm of kids visiting us in Alaska…sucks for them, but we’ll still figure something out that’s interesting for goofy teens.)

We’ll see what happens. I’m looking forward to the trip, and I’m even more excited to see what my wife does next. My opinion: she’s been letting her job hold her back from too many adventures for too damn long. But…she likes the work, and likes the people she works with directly.

All futures look good from here. But the new weekly stories are on hold till July. Unless things change again! (Isn’t life just goofy as all hell that way?)

Meanwhile, to pass on a bit of good news: beta readers are saying favorable things about The Secret, and I’ve been able to fix stuff as reports have come in…so that, at least, will still proceed as planned.

And I’ll still publish stuff to Amazon on Wednesdays for a while, and each story will be free for five days–but I’ll (mostly?) just be uploading stories that are currently free on the blog.

So, sorry about the delay. Wish us luck anyway? It couldn’t hurt…

And have fun out there!

Wow.

I didn’t really want to post anything else related to online security so soon after getting into it the other day, but…sheesh. I looked into the services a couple of VPN providers actually–you know–provide.

TLDR: Many VPN providers do not actually offer what I would call strong encryption. At all. Though this doesn’t mean they won’t throw buzzwords at you.

I checked out TorGuard.net to start with (turns out that “Tor” in the name is short for “torrent” btw). Turns out they offer a choice of protocols: OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP. The PPTP link goes to a Wikipedia article about its “security”…which is minimal at best. Though…spoiler…as actually implemented by VPN providers, the PPTP option may be your best protection against casual traffic decryption. Weird but true. It would at least require some computing resources, whereas the others just don’t.

The L2TP method requires what’s called a pre-shared key, which can mean very strong encryption–unfortunately, the key used with TorGuard is “torguard” and is the same for all users. OpenVPN can use client certificates or a pre-shared key, or even both…but TorGuard’s implementation uses the same certificate for everybody, and it’s freely downloadable by anyone at all from their website. They’ll throw buzzwords about the encryption they do, but if the key is known, none of that necessarily matters.

What does this mean? It’s really just this simple: if anyone at all (ISP, wifi hotspot operator, NSA, MPAA, whoever) records your VPN session (from the beginning), you should assume they can decrypt the whole thing at their leisure. This doesn’t necessarily mean they can get everything. But how do you know?

Note: if someone comes in late and records sometime after your session has started, they’re probably out of luck with decrypting your traffic–for the moment. Some people store this stuff forever, just in case a way to break a cipher comes along later on. Regardless…the next time you connect, if they’re still logging…well. A confession: OpenVPN, if properly configured, can (probably) defeat this. Is it properly configured? Not by default, and not without effort. Can PPTP sessions be secured, at all? No. How about anything relying on a pre-shared key? Not if the key is known. Oh well.

I took a quick look around. Overplay.net seems to offer a cool service, but it has precisely the same limitations. In addition, if you want to configure a connection with a router using the freely available dd-wrt firmware? They’ll give you an easy application you can download to set it up for you! The catch: each time your router reboots, it goes to overplay.net and downloads the code. Which means…well, in addition to the fact that your ISP (or other “attacker”) can possibly decrypt your VPN traffic if they want to? They can also run arbitrary code on your router. Or an attacker who pretends to be overplay.net can do so. Which means, in principle, that they can access your private (home?) network too.

Does this mean no VPN is worth the bother? Not quite, and for two reasons:

1. They obscure your IP address from the websites and other internet resources to which you connect. This is still far from an anonymity guarantee (I recommend browsing to torproject.org and reading their recommendations), but it’s something.
2. They also help you to get past ordinary filters and logging software. This can be very convenient. Not everybody is going to be out to get you, after all, and this is (currently) non-trivial snooping I’m talking about. But did you click on that earlier link? Seems the NSA thinks that if your traffic is encrypted that means they can store it until they can decrypt it. No warrant or active investigation needed. No matter how long that takes. So…hmm.
3. (Who’s counting, anyway?) Not all VPN providers are quite so deliberately misleading. Or at least I hope they’re not. But if they’re not generating a certificate just for you, or a pre-shared key that’s clearly associated with you only? All the caveats in this article apply. That’s not all they’d have to do to protect you, but…at least they’re trying. You know?

I looked around a bit more, and checked out Cryptohippie‘s site because I like a lot of what Paul Rosenberg writes. They actually (appear to…how would I audit this?) go to more effort than most to protect you…but do they actually offer either unique client-side certificates or unique per-user pre-shared keys? I couldn’t tell from the documentation. I’d think it would be a selling point. So…if they do, well, Cryptohippie will cost you a few hundred a year. If they don’t, the benefit of their complex system (which generally protects you against their own ability to know what sort of browsing you’re doing, which I do think is very cool of them, but again…audit?) is meaningless vs. snooping by an ISP. Or hotspot operator. Or, you know, anybody with access to your internet traffic before it reaches their VPN.

You know what? Personally I won’t trust any VPN service until it does allow an audit, or some other form of verifiable transparency. I want to see all config files, and have some assurance that they’re real. Otherwise? This stuff is all based on trust. Do you know these people personally, and fully trust their competence? Me neither.

So, well, there you are. If you want to browse the internet at all, I strongly recommend using one browser (possibly configured to use Tor) for all the sites to which you log in, and another (ideally the Tor Browser Bundle) for everything else. I see nothing wrong with adding a VPN to the mix–but I’d use both the VPN and Tor.

Did you want streaming video or audio? Well, I guess a VPN may be better than nothing. But possibly…not much better. Bear it in mind, okay? Also bear in mind that I’m currently trying really hard not to post a bunch of stuff about “secure” browsing with an iPhone vs. doing the same via Android. Also, I should probably get back to writing fiction.

And have fun out there! {8′>

[UPDATE 8/28/2013: I just spoke on the phone with a representative of Amazon’s “KDP Executive Customer Relations” about all this, which surprised the heck out of me.

• He agreed that the email I received was in fact about exclusivity rather than copyright–I made this point in the comments below–and told me they have now come up with friendlier language.
• He also used the delay in updates to Google’s search results as an analogy by way of explaining why their system had identified my site’s content as violating KDP Select’s guidelines.
• He agreed that the “5 days” part could present problems.
• I suggested automating an actual check of the site/URL in question and revisiting the “5 days” requirement. He said he would mention it but that sort of change would take longer than the modifications they already made to their email. (I’d love to see the new version, if any of you happen to get sent a copy!)
• He asked that I continue to “challenge” them (his word) when I run across problems like this.

Folks, I’m flattered and flabbergasted. He apologized several times, and seemed sincere about it. Looks like they’re trying to do better over there, and I think that deserves some appreciation. ]

[ANOTHER UPDATE, SAME DAY: For those of you who are coming here and believe Amazon should be doing this for issues outside KDP Select exclusivity, I have a question–why do you think Amazon should be defining “copyright infringement” on behalf of actual copyright holders? Isn’t that way beyond the scope of their licensing agreements with authors? How could they reasonably know who’s been licensed to do what? And why would copyright holders want Amazon to in any way define their responses to infringement anyway? I think they’re right to stay out of that mess. I just didn’t like that they originally implied they were talking about copyright/plagiarism when they weren’t. ]

Hi!

Just to be clear: I’m irritated, but I do actually like Amazon as a company. Still…sometimes a large organization goes goofy on you. I’d heard of this particular variety of goofiness before, but didn’t expect to encounter it. Here’s the backstory:

1. I’ve offered free stories here on my blog
2. Originally I intended to take them down and publish them exclusively to Amazon (boy did I change my mind).
3. Since the first story (You Sleigh Me) was indeed made exclusive to Amazon, I took it down prior to publishing it through them.
4. All my other “Weekly Challenge” stories are free on my blog, and will remain so until I put them into collections, which will be…not soon. I’m busy. And I’ve been publishing them via Smashwords, as freebies. ‘Cause that’s what I want to do, for reasons.

So this morning I got email from kdp-support@amazon.com telling me that content in You Sleigh Me is freely available on the web. Here’s the text:

Hello,

We’re writing about the following book(s):

You Sleigh Me by Young, David Haywood (AUTHOR) (ID:3925230)

During a review of your KDP submission(s), we found content in your book is freely available on the web. To confirm you have publishing rights to this content, and that you control where you distribute the book(s), please take one of the following actions:

1. Confirm rights: If you hold the electronic publishing rights for all of the content in this book, and have attributed all creative commons content, proceed to the “Rights & Pricing” submission page from your Bookshelf and resubmit your book for publishing. (Instructions are below.)

2. Remove content: If you do not hold the electronic publishing rights for all of the content in this book, you can remove the book from your Bookshelf. (Instructions are below.)

Please take the appropriate action within 5 days. If you publish books for which you do not hold the electronic publishing rights, your account may be terminated. If your account is terminated, all of the books you have been uploaded through KDP will be removed from the Kindle store and you will not be permitted to open new KDP accounts.

Regards,

Kindle Direct Publishing
http://kdp.amazon.com

Well…ain’t that more fun than a barrel of leeches? Sure, I can go click their buttons. It’ll probably resolve the issue. But frankly this pisses me off. I don’t know that I actually need Amazon anyway–I don’t want to get into a long digression about their algorithms & such here, but these days I don’t think they do authors much good unless the authors get a boost from elsewhere. In which case? Amazon is much less valuable to indie writers than it used to be. And I’m in this game for the long haul, so I expect to outlast the company (or at least any current set of policies) anyway.

Did you guys notice that “within 5 days” part? That’s the section that particularly riles me. What if I’d been on vacation? Do they offer similar ultimata to Random Penguin Solutions? (Which for the uninitiated is–sort of–a very large publisher. I may have taken liberties with their actual name, but I think it was Nate Hoffelder who said it first, so blame him.)

So here’s my response:

I just received an email claiming that my story titled “You Sleigh Me” is freely available on the web. Well, it was on my blog before I put it into KDP Select, so I suppose it’s possible someone copied it before I took it down.

If so, I see that as (1) free advertising, and (2) not your concern. Do you intend to begin removing all legitimate content from your store that has been pirated elsewhere? That’ll definitely make an interesting blog post for me.

Please clarify your position re: your threat to close my account for publishing my own story. I don’t particularly care whether you follow through on it, but I imagine other writers will take an interest.

Oh, and please also let me know where you say you’ve found my story. If I can go post a comment wherever it is I may choose to do so.

(In reference to You Sleigh Me by Young, David Haywood (AUTHOR) (ID:3925230))

And there you have it. A tempest in a teacup? Possibly. Did someone in the KDP program get irate that I’m putting free stories up every week, and also publishing them to Amazon, and making it very clear that Amazon is choosing not to allow them to be listed as freebies on their site? Possibly. I like that idea, myself, so I sort of hope that’s what’s going on.

‘Cause…I’m putting up free stories. On Amazon I flat-out tell people they’re free on my blog. If they come to my blog they can find ’em and click “Send to Kindle” and get ’em for free that way.

Who looks like a big fat jerk here? Even without sending obnoxious form letters.

Regardless: Have fun out there! {8′>

(Anything involving Amazon seems to be horribly polarizing. I’ve turned comments off for this post, as there were some personal attacks. To which I say: even if you’re right about me, though the source of your evidence is somewhat unclear, the issues I raised remain. Also, I’m not your mom, and you can act up somewhere else. Thanks.)

Hi!

I’m changing my plan for the weekly freebies. Why am I doing that? ‘Cause…

1. A writer who’s been around quite a bit longer than I have (Hi Dean!) put some time & effort into convincing me I was bein’ dumb (though I doubt he’d approve of the “free” parts of my new plan either),
2. Frankly I don’t like making stories/books exclusive to Amazon to begin with,
3. Several of you internet denizens have asked that I not make stuff exclusive to a site they prefer not to use,
4. One reader in particular (Hi Heather!) keeps bugging me to post stuff on Wattpad, but Amazon’s “exclusive” requirement has been a barrier,
5. I think the new idea will work better anyway, and
6. Really, in the interest of fairness & equality of opportunity…it just seems like the right thing to do.

So…prior to today the plan was that the freebies would go up on Wednesdays, be taken down each following Tuesday, and also published (exclusively) to Amazon on Tuesday. In return for this, Amazon would “allow” me to make the stories free for five out of every 90 days. I figured that plan would get the stories in front of more readers than would find ’em if they had–you know–a price tag.

Instead? Starting with last week’s entry (“The Gorilla, the Goldfish & Everything”) I’m going to leave the free stories on the blog. I will publish them worldwide, to many ebook retailers. They will be FREE, not for 5/90 days but all the time. Except for one retailer that won’t let me do it. That company is…wait for it…Amazon.

So this sucks, a bit, for those of you who use Amazon. Guess what, though? You can come to the blog, find the story you want, and click the “Send to Kindle” button. You’ll get it, for free. Just as if it was what you and I both wanted to begin with.

Theoretically Amazon will price-match, meaning that if a story is free elsewhere they’ll eventually get around to making it free on their sites too. In my experience? That can take months of daily reporting by lots of people. So…if you take an interest, please feel free to copy the links I’ll be posting on each story’s page on this site and report them to Amazon. Meanwhile, though, I’m not waiting.

It might be a couple of days before I get my web pages arranged to match all this (and also before I get some stories published to non-Amazon sites). Bear with me? The end result should be fairly cool.

Eventually I’ll be publishing story collections. Once those are up, the stories I include will develop a price. Or possibly be taken down altogether to avoid cluttering the internet. {8′>

This isn’t going to be a totally fair arrangement. I wish it could be. It’s the best I can do, though, with the tools available.

One more thing: if you come across a story you particularly like? It would be very helpful to me if you took the time to post a review online. Doesn’t really matter where, as long as people can find it.

Hope this helps, and…have fun out there!

Whew. That was a close one.

In my recent post I told you guys about a bunch of fake Facebook ‘likes’ that hit my page (no link, now or ever, to FB). I updated it to let you know I’d unpublished the page and notified Facebook. And that I’d be removing all my links to the Facebook page from my books eventually.

Thankfully, they’re on the ball! They totally got it, and fixed everything!

Here is the complete text of their emailed response:

Our records indicate that your payments account was disabled due to suspected fraudulent activity. In the interest of protecting our users, we will not be able to reenable your payments account. This decision is final.

Thanks for your understanding,

Awesome job, guys. This helps a bunch. Clearly you FB guys understand exactly what I was after: a payments account. So I could, I guess, pay you to spam people? But you stopped me just in time! Whew.

Have fun out there.